Blade Runner 2049

[Down by Law]

You're right in that they are profitable, but you said these are the kind of movies audiences want to see.

When you compare Hell or High Water's take of 37 million worldwide vs Suicide Squad's 745 million I'm sure the latter is putting more arses on seats, no matter how terrible the movie is.

 

I saw both Sicario and HoHW on their opening weekends in the UK and there were only a handful of people in both screenings. I was telling anyone who would listen to see Sicario and they were all like 'ill wait for netflix or the bluray' but couldn't fucking wait to see the next interchangeable spandex movie.

 

[Capwn]

Saw it this afternoon at the one and only 2D showing at the local 16 screen multiplex cineplex, it was on a really small screen! I hate my local cineplex so much, it's obviously they just have no respect for cinema. They grudgingly do their 1 showing a day and put it in a shitty screen so that people are more enticed to watch it in 3D. Also they showed a 10min behind the scenes look at the film before the movie after I have purposely avoiding the final trailers  It's so stupid isn't it? As soon as Gosling walks into that yellow architecture environment it's like 'Oh hey it's the Harrison Ford bit!'.

 

 Aaaaaanyway. I loved the presentation, the sets, the acting, the soundtrack and to my surprise I didn't find myself relieved when the credits came up, I could have watched another 20-30 mins. 

 

Saying that, I don't rate the script much. It's just random stuff to get from A to B to C etc but thankfully the presentation carries it all. I'm sure I've missed all the layers to this but to me it was just...

 

Gosling is a droid. Oh wow he isn't a droid. Oh actually he is. Harrison Ford has a daughter, he gets to see her that's nice. Gosling dies.

 

That's all I got from it in terms of narrative.

[kerraig UK]

15 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

You're right in that they are profitable, but you said these are the kind of movies audiences want to see.

When you compare Hell or High Water's take of 37 million worldwide vs Suicide Squad's 745 million I'm sure the latter is putting more arses on seats, no matter how terrible the movie is.

 

I saw both Sicario and HoHW on their opening weekends in the UK and there were only a handful of people in both screenings. I was telling anyone who would listen to see Sicario and they were all like 'ill wait for netflix or the bluray' but couldn't fucking wait to see the next interchangeable spandex movie.

 

I'm not arguing against Suicide Squad. I'm arguing against nostalgia porn. None of the 80's/90's remakes are working. That's my point.

I'm saying that a studio would make more money by making 3 Get Outs than by making one Ghostbusters remake. The tentpoles will always be the tentpoles.

[Spacehost]

Well that was a lot of movie for the money. In many ways.

[ZOK]

What a terrific flick! A real lesson in paying respectful homage to the superior source material, if you are in the position where that is as important as the story you think you are telling.

 

It suffers from the modern disease of a film thinking it’s far smarter than it actually is, and becomes overly ponderous as a result, but it’s lots of fun, and the (thankfully rare) dumb bits don’t sully memories of the source, which is all anyone can really hope for. A beautiful result.

[makkuwata]

6 hours ago, Capwn said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Gosling is a droid. Oh wow he isn't a droid. Oh actually he is. Harrison Ford has a daughter, he gets to see her that's nice. Gosling dies.

 

 

That's all I got from it in terms of narrative.

 

I in no way interpreted that last part as you did.

 

I don't really know what they were going for, but I got more of a 'serene/at peace/at one with the nature of his reality' kind of vibe. No way he died.

[ngchol]

25 minutes ago, makkuwata said:

 

I in no way interpreted that last part as you did.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I don't really know what they were going for, but I got more of a 'serene/at peace/at one with the nature of his reality' kind of vibe. No way he died.

 

 

The screenwriter drops an ambiguous hint here:

 

Spoiler

http://ew.com/movies/2017/10/08/blade-runner-2049-ending-explained/

 

[DeciderVT]

Spoiler

He looked down at snow in the blood pooled under his coat, lay back on the steps and "Tears in Rain" played. It was a callback to Batty finally accepting his death. Of course K died.

 

[MrPogo]

 

He's clearly dead, unless they decide to bring him back for Blade Runner 2054 or something, in which case it was merely a flesh wound 

[SpagMasterSwift]

I enjoyed it, but certainly don’t have any desire for them to make another one.

[jonamok]

Re. K:

Spoiler

Totally dead. Watch his eyelashes. As he’s dying they flicker as snowflakes touch them. And then for the last few seconds they are utterly still. Then the camera cuts to above him, looking down from the sky. That’s like cinema language for the soul he isn’t supposed to have leaving his body. Dead as fuck.

 

[makkuwata]

He glued his arm together early on and is fine. Gosling is alive and well.

[Spacehost]

Spoiler

He's deader than Ridley Scott's post-Prometheus reputation.

 

[Pob]

This is pretty mindblowing. There was a bit towards the end where I felt I was completely enveloped by the audiovisuals and I was thinking "fuck me this is good".
 

Spoiler

 

It was the bit where the convoy of spinners is escorting Deckard from Wallace HQ to the city limits - the intense music was at a crescendo, there was rain and snow obscuring fucking everything apart from the lights from the spinners. Just totally awesome.

 

I get the feeling I'll probably be thinking about it for a while yet, and for once it feels like a film that'll reward multiple viewings, such was its density. I felt like I couldn't take in all the detail first time round. Like my all-time favourites, I'll be seeing new things on my fourth or fifth viewing. I really hope so, anyway.

 

I loved how it continued to the theme of BR where it doesn't actually matter who is and isn't a replicant. Life is life. The line "is the dog real?" "I don't know - why don't you ask him?" was absolutely brilliant in that regard. When the credits rolled my mate said "interesting that they confirmed that Deckard is human" and I said "what? I thought it meant he was definitely a replicant" and it slowly dawned on us that it's still ambiguous. Genius.

 

And how refreshing to see a blockbuster and be surprised from the very opening scenes. I had no idea Gosling was playing a replicant, or that Dave Bautista dies in the opening scene, or that it's about a naturally-born replicant, or anything beyond the fact that Deckard is in it. Right from the outset I had no idea where it was going, and it kept me guessing long past the point where I was probably supposed to have worked out what was going on.

 

I think it could've lost 20 minutes here and there and worked a bit better. I agree with @Alex W. that the admittedly important sex scene came at a very odd place in pacing terms. In the middle section the plot seemed to want to get into fifth gear but pace-wise we still seemed to be stuck in moody scene-setting.

 

Also I struggled a bit with The Wallace Corps' omnipotence or lack of it. Fairly early on they're monitoring K close enough to call in a surgical orbital bombardment the second his life in danger but later on he manages to take out the convoy that's escorting the key to the future and they suddenly seem to be a lot weaker. It'd probably be clearer on repeat viewing.

 

 

[MrPogo]

On the last point; by the bit at the end of the film they'd left him for dead and were no longer following him

[Beitel]

I really like it and it has this incredibly weird relationship to the original. The appeal of the original Blade Runner for me is 50% music, 30% cinematography and 20% story (the dialogue in the first half of the film is awful, the second half surprisingly touching). Here it's totally different: it's the script, Villeneuve's directing and Gosling's acting that for me form the heart of this film. The visual side of the film, beautiful as it is, doesn't elevate the material as much but is still a welcome and well-done atmosphere to bathe in. It could use a trim at points though: the script doesn't contain three hours worth of ideas and the sparse visual style make the less interesting parts feel pretty empty. The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer is just disappointing though. Zimmer is no Vangelis so the focus on the amazing sounding buzzes, clashes and zaps is the right one for this composer, but I wish another one would've tried a more melodic, melancholic and original approach.

 

 

The story of 'K' is pretty amazingly done. It really let me empathize not only with the life of a synthetic being, but also his emotional experiences with every twist and turn later on. Just like Deckard in the first film he's partly on the sidelines later in the film, but not a moment felt flat. Feeling content dying for a good cause is for me quite hard sell, but one that script, direction and acting sold me every step on the way. So many great themes: the questions of his own identity, his love for something that could very well be programmed exactly to be this way (and could genuinely experience these emotions to be this effective), a world that provides so little hope and so much artificiality that being part of a true miracle is worth one's life.

The same I didn't feel with the character of Luv and Deckard. K is this perfect combination of emotion that guides his actions, but Luv was more a combination of plot-points with some rationalizations to make it work as a character. Almost there, but it just lacked something. And the whole fight in Las Vegas between Deckard and K just lacked weight for me, never being a convincing call-back to the Deckard of the first film nor really selling me a man in self-imposed exile. Harrison Ford doesn't ruin it, but he's too old to really land these scenes nowadays. The Elvis/Marilyn Monroe fight scene should've been cut completely (and even this weakest scene in my eyes has some neat ideas). The very last shot is still very strong though, but the script and direction is strong enough that Ford didn't have to do anything to make that work.

 

Edit: I just remember the "she had green eyes" moment which he did nail, so maybe I'm a bit harsh on him.

 

 

It's cool. I really like Villeneuve as a director and I'm curious what he'll make after Dune.

[BitterToad]

11 hours ago, kerraig UK said:

I'm not arguing against Suicide Squad. I'm arguing against nostalgia porn. None of the 80's/90's remakes are working. That's my point.

I'm saying that a studio would make more money by making 3 Get Outs than by making one Ghostbusters remake. The tentpoles will always be the tentpoles.

 

So you're saying that studios would make more money by making loads of super high quality surprise smashes that did far better than anyone would have expected than one lower quality nostalgia fest that had a wealth of right wing hate against it? I mean, yeah...

 

The success rate on movies of Get Out's budget/magnitude is much harder to replicate than that of a remake like Ghostbusters. If Ghostbusters had been a 5* critical darling without all of the anti woman nonsense it would have made a shit ton more money. Ghostbusters didn't fail because it's an 80's Nostalgia movie. It failed because the marketing was pretty awful and it cut out a lot of its hardcore audience because those people are arseholes. 

 

Look at Star Wars, at Jurassic World, at IT, all movies trading off a fair amount of nostalgia for either a film series or a time, and all absolutely smashing it at the box office. 

 

People are still watching nostalgia based movies, and Blade Runner is in no way a disaster worldwide. I'm pretty sure with the positive word of mouth it could turn into a Mad Max rather than a Ghostbusters. I'll certainly be seeing it again and I'll be telling everyone I know to do the same. 

[Benny]

I thought Ghostbusters failed because it was actually a bit shit?

[Capwn]

Quote

Blade Runner 2049 has earned critical praise, but struggled to find an audience on its opening night. The film brought in only $12.7 million domestically on Friday, with an estimated weekend performance in the mid to low $30 million range.

 

This is depressing, it deserves to do better. It's so unique and finally for once it's not clearly a setup for more movies.

[Capwn]

Actually I bet I know what it is. Most 'normal' people went out very recently to see IT, they are in no rush to go back to the cinema anytime soon.

[ZOK]

2 hours ago, MrPogo said:

 

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On the last point; by the bit at the end of the film they'd left him for dead and were no longer following him

 

 

Which was odd in itself - if it was so important, and your resources are unlimited, why not make sure?

 

The film was riddled with poor logic if you want to go looking for it, so it’s best not to. It’s probably the best looking film I’ve seen at the cinema since Under the Skin, and that’s good enough for me.

[kerraig UK]

2 hours ago, BitterToad said:

 

So you're saying that studios would make more money by making loads of super high quality surprise smashes that did far better than anyone would have expected than one lower quality nostalgia fest that had a wealth of right wing hate against it? I mean, yeah...

 

The success rate on movies of Get Out's budget/magnitude is much harder to replicate than that of a remake like Ghostbusters. If Ghostbusters had been a 5* critical darling without all of the anti woman nonsense it would have made a shit ton more money. Ghostbusters didn't fail because it's an 80's Nostalgia movie. It failed because the marketing was pretty awful and it cut out a lot of its hardcore audience because those people are arseholes. 

 

Look at Star Wars, at Jurassic World, at IT, all movies trading off a fair amount of nostalgia for either a film series or a time, and all absolutely smashing it at the box office. 

 

People are still watching nostalgia based movies, and Blade Runner is in no way a disaster worldwide. I'm pretty sure with the positive word of mouth it could turn into a Mad Max rather than a Ghostbusters. I'll certainly be seeing it again and I'll be telling everyone I know to do the same. 

 

Get out cost €3m to produce and €15m to market. 

 

Ghostbusters, robocop, total recall, dirty dancing etc

[CarloOos]

It's worth mentioning that Blade Runner 2049 is still the biggest opening weekend of both Villeneuve's and Gosling's careers.

 

The thing is it's a dour, serious three hour existential sci-fi film given the marketing and budget of a blockbusting crowd pleaser, and whilst I'm glad it got made on those terms because it's sumptuous piece of work it does seem rather foolhardy to expect it to also perform like a blockbuster. I saw it on one of the biggest screens in Leicester Square and whilst that screen was 100% full, they were only doing three screenings a day because it's so long.  

 

It's essentially a prestige film, and they should have released it during award season, which is a much more appropriate market for something like this. Given the chance I think it could have a long tail though, lots of talk from people wanting to see it again.

[Pob]

51 minutes ago, ZOK said:

 

Which was odd in itself - if it was so important, and your resources are unlimited, why not make sure?

Spoiler

 

I was wondering whether Luv quite likes dispatching humans but isn't into replicide (she's not keen on Niander killing his failed breeder replicant) but then she kills Rachael v2 without a second thought so there goes that theory.

 

Overall I liked that enough was left unsaid that it neuters nitpicking. The characters just don't have enough knowledge to give all the answers. Great stuff.

 

They did lampshade an issue with the whole idea of super-expensive replicants being used for combat and manual labour when presumably a fugly robot can do a better job at a fraction of the price, when Luv is trying to talk a client out of wasting her money on a consignment of human-perfect replicants.

 

 

[K]

One thing I did think was interesting was the way they portrayed Deckard. I re-watched Blade Runner for the first time in a decade on Friday, and one thing that struck me was just how emotionally bleak the film is. When I'd watched it previously, I just thought it was a cool sci-fi film with some interesting concepts underlying it, but this time I was amazed by what an unpleasant character Deckard actually is. Someone whose job it is to hunt down and kill escaped slaves is either going to be extremely damaged or just plain broken, but Deckard is still weirdly nasty and cold by the standards of the film protagonist. He's a bully - he blithely confirms Rachael's worst fears about her true nature by casually playing back a couple of her intimate childhood memories to her. He's weak-willed - he doesn't take much convincing from Bryant to go back to being a blade runner, despite apparently being gone for good. He's a coward and a murderer - the only detective work he does in the film results in him shooting an unarmed woman in the back as she's running away from him. He's even borderline incompetent as a cop - Taffy Lewis blows Deckard off pretty casually when he's trying to hit him up for information, and he only tracks down Baty and Pris when the LAPD radio him with the address of the building where they're hiding out, apparently while Deckard is just sat in his car, alone, staring into space. And of course he rapes Rachael when she comes to him looking for someone to help her.

 

He's a turd of a man, when weirdly, I'd always thought he was cool. The last twenty minutes of the film is him pathetically running away from Roy. The film as a whole is him alternating between killing and hurting women, and cowering from powerful men. That said, this doesn't make Blade Runner a worse film; it makes it a difficult thing to watch in places, but it also gives the whole duality between replicants and humans quite an interesting charge. It has more in common with the nihilism of the seventies, rather than the technical optimism of the eighties. It's still a great film, but also a very grim one.

 

In BR2049,

they steer clear of addressing much of this, at least directly. It portrays Rachael and Deckard's relationship as being something meaningful, but in an interesting, ambiguous way. Deckard seems to be genuinely affected by anything involving Rachael - he breaks down when he gets to see his daughter, and he submits to horrific torture rather than give up her or Rachael up. But is it meaningful for both of them, or just for Deckard? Did Rachael want him cut off from his daughter to protect her from the authorities, or to protect her from Deckard? If Deckard now has memories of a happy, fulfilling relationship with Rachael, is that the same thing as it having actually happened? A lot can happen in two years - a rape victim could end up loving her attacker. But a lot more can happen in twenty eight years. Funny things happen to someone's memory when he's holed up in a deserted casino drinking whisky for the best part of three decades. Did he idealise a bad relationship, or eulogise a precious one? 

[Pob]

I rewatched the three short BR2049 films again just now and they add some nice texture. The anime is clearly the standout and adds a tonne of interesting back story but I also really liked seeing more of Wallace.

 

Spoiler

In particular I like the emphasis on him being willing to go to any lengths to expand the colonies to escape a ruined Earth, to ensure the survival of the human race. Very Elon Musk. Except he's not created a race of artificial slaves. Yet.

 

[jon_cybernet]

16 hours ago, kerraig UK said:

I'm not arguing against Suicide Squad. I'm arguing against nostalgia porn. None of the 80's/90's remakes are working. That's my point.
 

 

I dunno, 'It' worked like gangbusters and made way more money than Get Out. If nothing else it proves that there is a market if you pick the right property. 

[Benny]

2 hours ago, K said:

One thing I did think was interesting was the way they portrayed Deckard. I re-watched Blade Runner for the first time in a decade on Friday, and one thing that struck me was just how emotionally bleak the film is. When I'd watched it previously, I just thought it was a cool sci-fi film with some interesting concepts underlying it, but this time I was amazed by what an unpleasant character Deckard actually is. Someone whose job it is to hunt down and kill escaped slaves is either going to be extremely damaged or just plain broken, but Deckard is still weirdly nasty and cold by the standards of the film protagonist. He's a bully - he blithely confirms Rachael's worst fears about her true nature by casually playing back a couple of her intimate childhood memories to her. He's weak-willed - he doesn't take much convincing from Bryant to go back to being a blade runner, despite apparently being gone for good. He's a coward and a murderer - the only detective work he does in the film results in him shooting an unarmed woman in the back as she's running away from him. He's even borderline incompetent as a cop - Taffy Lewis blows Deckard off pretty casually when he's trying to hit him up for information, and he only tracks down Baty and Pris when the LAPD radio him with the address of the building where they're hiding out, apparently while Deckard is just sat in his car, alone, staring into space. And of course he rapes Rachael when she comes to him looking for someone to help her.

 

He's a turd of a man, when weirdly, I'd always thought he was cool. The last twenty minutes of the film is him pathetically running away from Roy. The film as a whole is him alternating between killing and hurting women, and cowering from powerful men. That said, this doesn't make Blade Runner a worse film; it makes it a difficult thing to watch in places, but it also gives the whole duality between replicants and humans quite an interesting charge. It has more in common with the nihilism of the seventies, rather than the technical optimism of the eighties. It's still a great film, but also a very grim one.

 

In BR2049,

  Hide contents

they steer clear of addressing much of this, at least directly. It portrays Rachael and Deckard's relationship as being something meaningful, but in an interesting, ambiguous way. Deckard seems to be genuinely affected by anything involving Rachael - he breaks down when he gets to see his daughter, and he submits to horrific torture rather than give up her or Rachael up. But is it meaningful for both of them, or just for Deckard? Did Rachael want him cut off from his daughter to protect her from the authorities, or to protect her from Deckard? If Deckard now has memories of a happy, fulfilling relationship with Rachael, is that the same thing as it having actually happened? A lot can happen in two years - a rape victim could end up loving her attacker. But a lot more can happen in twenty eight years. Funny things happen to someone's memory when he's holed up in a deserted casino drinking whisky for the best part of three decades. Did he idealise a bad relationship, or eulogise a precious one? 

 

 

The points you make above have been very much my reading of Blade Runner in recent times, and why it still remains perhaps my favourite film with even more depths to it than before. I now read Deckard as being an antagonist, with Batty doing what he has to do for him and his people to survive, despite being completely fucked up and homicidal, and showing more emotion and compassion for his companions than Deckard ever shows to anyone.

 

I'm actually starting to come around to the idea that Deckard may actually be human. A broken and cold one. I also believe his initial treatment of Rachel can be read as he never saw her as an equal either, and may have tried forcing her in a manifestation of his self hate and disregard for replicants, and may have come to care for her later even as she was being taken advantage of. Rachel's story is one of the most tragic in the film. Manufactured, given an existential crisis and raped by her would be killer. It's incredibly grim.

[BitterToad]

3 hours ago, kerraig UK said:

 

Get out cost €3m to produce and €15m to market. 

 

Ghostbusters, robocop, total recall, dirty dancing etc

Right but not EVERY €18 million a studio spends on horror films directed by comedy actors will go on to make Get Out money. What you're saying is that studios should stop spending money on nostalgia driven films, and then listing examples of those that failed whilst ignoring all of the many that are currently the biggest films in the world. And you're saying that they should spend money on surprise smashes. Which is very difficult to do. 

 

Because they're surprises. 

[K]

25 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

The points you make above have been very much my reading of Blade Runner in recent times, and why it still remains perhaps my favourite film with even more depths to it than before. I now read Deckard as being an antagonist, with Batty doing what he has to do for him and his people to survive, despite being completely fucked up and homicidal, and showing more emotion and compassion for his companions than Deckard ever shows to anyone.

 

I'm actually starting to come around to the idea that Deckard may actually be human. A broken and cold one. I also believe his initial treatment of Rachel can be read as he never saw her as an equal either, and may have tried forcing her in a manifestation of his self hate and disregard for replicants, and may have come to care for her later even as she was being taken advantage of. Rachel's story is one of the most tragic in the film. Manufactured, given an existential crisis and raped by her would be killer. It's incredibly grim.

 

Yeah, during the final sequence of the film, I was thinking the same thing. You could have made Blade Runner with the replicants as the protagonists, and quite easily portray them as heroes. (provided you assume Roy doesn't kill Chew, and ignore them killing Sebastian). Deckard behaves more like a villain than a hero in the way that he coldly stalks the replicants, and prevails more through their mistakes than through his own virtues.

 

I actually thought Deckard's coldness and ruthlessness strengthened the Philip K Dick idea of humans being indistinguishable from their creations - androids copying our best aspects is one thing, but the two species will really be indistinguishable when replicants display the worst of humanity. A replicant that's in denial about its appalling cruelty is very human.